1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems for distributing electronic mail (e-mail). More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for using a pseudo-client to apply personalized rules to e-mail messages within an e-mail server.
2. Related Art
The rapid proliferation in e-mail in recent years is largely due to the convenience, speed, and low-cost of sending e-mail messages in comparison to other forms of communication. Unfortunately, these advantages also make it easier for advertisers and other entities to cheaply and rapidly distribute mass quantities of junk e-mail to millions of e-mail users. This problem has grown so large that it is now common for some e-mail users to receive hundreds of junk e-mail messages each day. This tremendous volume of junk e-mail takes a great deal of time to sort through, which causes great annoyance to e-mail users.
To remedy this problem, a number of e-mail filters have been developed to filter out unwanted e-mail messages using pre-defined filtering criteria. Existing e-mail filters can either be located at an e-mail client system, or alternatively, at an e-mail server system.
A client-based e-mail filter is typically applied to e-mail messages whenever a request to check mail is sent to an e-mail server from the client computing system. An e-mail user is typically able to customize filtering rules stored on the client to meet his or her specific needs.
However, a client-based e-mail filter may not be effective if the user switches between different client machines. For example, many users are mobile today, accessing e-mail from many different devices. If a user retrieves e-mail from another device, such as a portable computing device or a computer system belonging to another user, the customized filtering rules may not be available on the other device. In this case, it is not be possible to apply the customized filtering rules. Moreover, although it is possible to configure multiple clients to apply the same customized set of filtering rules, the process of configuring multiple clients is time-consuming. Furthermore, the task of updating and maintaining these filtering rules on multiple clients is also time-consuming.
In contrast, a server-based e-mail filter operates on an e-mail server computer system that processes e-mail for multiple e-mail users. As with a client-based e-mail filter, customized filtering rules can be applied at the e-mail server to filter out unwanted e-mail messages. However, there is a limitation to the number of rules that can be enforced on an e-mail server because each rule adds load to the server, which can reduce performance. Given this limitation, most server-based filtering rules are enforced over large sets of users homogeneously. This homogenous application of rules helps with problems for the entire user community. However, it hinders personalization of e-mail filtering.
Another problem with server-based e-mail filters is that a given user may access a number of different mail servers, and each of these mail servers may apply a different set filtering rules. Hence, the user is likely encounter different e-mail filtering criteria for different e-mail servers.
Hence, what is needed is a method and an apparatus for applying personalized rules for handling e-mail messages without the problems listed above.